I’m a rope being pulled on both ends. I started to dispute her plea and she hushed me. “Save it,” she said. “Your words are wasted on me. I’ll take you to who you need to meet.”

My body began to vibrate. My stomach dropped several floors. “Mr. O?”

“If you’re ready.”

‘Ready’ is a misleading word. It’s a mantra, nothing more. Tell yourself you’re ready all you want. Tell anyone who will hear, and it doesn’t mean shit. Because you don’t know whether or not you’re truly ready until you step into whatever experience you were getting ready for. Then your words are worthless.

“Yes,” I said. Lying is a hard habit to break.

She smiled, a spark of compassion in her one open eye. This woman with her many twins. To think I had met two generations of the same genetic sequence in the span of a few days. The look she gave me now suggested affection. Maybe she had a shared memory of our time at The Mule Kick. Maybe I’d endeared myself somehow. Passed some kind of test that would garner mercy. Solved the great riddle in the game by accident.

Her open eye closed, her mouth opened, blood between the teeth, and out poured that unclean sonic reverberation, putting me to sleep.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six

I hear a guitar playing in my head. Acoustic strings strummed hard. I’m inside the hollow chasm that amplifies the sound. A temple of potential. Energy and vibration enough to move young and old. End or start a war.

I’m conscious now and can open my eyes but I’m not ready. The song in my head has never been played before. I’m its sole audience. Its lone witness. Without me, it doesn’t exist. Without it, my life is empty. When it stops my soul will wither and die. Let me stay here a little longer, then. Me and this simple tune that makes my heart shine and my body shake and my worries small. Let me dance one more time before I die.

There was a first person to strum a guitar and there will be a last. A first eye to open and a final one to close. Melody in between.